Manipulation
by Artemis II
Summary: I don't understand. I cannot believe it. You fanfiction writers are manipulating my mind, making me believe something that isn't true. It can't be true.


I am baffled.  
  
This is a rarity for Artemis Fowl, for those of you who do not know. (Do not know? It seems that you fanfiction writers know more about me and my past than I do myself!) To have stunned me into perplexity – no, in fact, I'm beyond perplexed, I am speechless. Something that has only happened three times since my fifth birthday. But perhaps you already know this as well.  
  
This site knows me – too well.  
  
I'm unnerved.  
  
I don't know the intellects behind fanfiction.net. Perhaps they are usurpers, potential threats to the Fowl empire or greedy pilferers who are already hacking into my network. But the innocence... there is a naïve taint to the stories I have browsed through. Neopets. Disney. Even Pokemon has its own category. I sense no threat from electric yellow teddy bears.  
  
In fact, the whole collection of narratives are amateurish. It is small wonder that I have overlooked this site in my pursuit of the arcane.  
  
But the descriptions. Have you yourself ever been scrolling down a list of story categories and seen your own name? Artemis Fowl. My cursor froze. I couldn't breathe. I clicked on my name (My name! Why is my name on this site?).  
  
Well, well, what have we here.  
  
A hundred stories.  
  
About ME.  
  
I thought for a moment, my father has taken up odd pastimes recently, perhaps this is one of his childish investments, but no. Artemis Fowl the Second. Youthful criminal mastermind. You know all of my exploits, all of my devious plots, even fragments of my past that I cannot remember.  
  
You have even made up a cast of characters to amuse yourselves with.  
  
A "Foaly", some sort of hybrid horseman; a centaur, in mythology. Commander Root, a coronary waiting to happen, judging by your descriptions. And a Holly Short.  
  
The uncanny thing is this; all of those names seem to belong to me, as if they fit into my history somehow. Foaly is somehow connected to a whinnying laugh, muted in the shadows. Root's shadow, hostile and challenging, flickers around my father's old crystal ashtray.  
  
Holly Short.  
  
I know that name.  
  
It's part of me.  
  
Who are you, fanfiction writers? Who are you to play on my whims? How do you know my name?  
  
I scroll down through the stories that "Holly Short" has generated. I'm so bewildered. I'm typing this as the page loads. Hundreds of them! "The Ivory Files." "Playing the Game." "Home Is Behind." All of them about me. And a diminutive elf with hazel eyes.  
  
Angeline crops up among them. People all over the world are writing things about my mother, the Butlers, myself. People – below the earth? Is it possible?  
  
Holly Short.  
  
I select the nearest narrative.  
  
As I read, shivers grace my spine. If I am to believe it, I abducted her, held her to ransom. We fought goblins and trolls together, and an American ego-tripping businessman named Spiro.  
  
She mindwiped me.  
  
Memory-  
  
"Am I right in believing that when I wake up, this will all be over?"  
  
It cannot be true.  
  
(Did I love her?)  
  
Cropped auburn hair, deep wry hazel eyes. A smug smile on her lips. She had given me a medallion when we parted; I no longer have it, I gave it to Mulch before the mindwipe, to make sure – to make sure that  
  
(I remember I remember)  
  
To make sure –  
  
Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon.  
  
Her trigger finger was cut off by the door what door? The train door, the Arctic train she saved my life Oh God I remember  
  
(Butler and Root dangling from a piton cord)  
  
Heal.  
  
She healed Butler, Domovoi Butler, the troll had come and then Spiro's bodyguard shot him, shot him and I had watched him die but she saved him (she did) am I dreaming?  
  
Captain  
  
(Can't we wipe the slate clean?)  
  
A severe liability to the People, Fowl Manor has been red flagged  
  
This is not real. You fanfiction writers are a threat! A potent threat, a mass conspiracy! The Empire will rise and I will destroy every one of you. There is a brain manipulator hidden in your documents! You are trying to confuse me into believing a false past! I don't know where you got technology like this  
  
(the C cube)  
  
but you are wielding it with alarming accuracy  
  
(I know who you are Artemis)  
  
and... I...  
  
(I remember I remember)  
  
hazel eyes, she had hazel eyes  
  
fanfiction.net is an active threat. I will close the site, I will have every one of you in chains. I'll use this manipulator to my advantage, make my enemies believe in trolls, in goblins, and when they are helpless in their own gullibility I will take their places of power. Don't think that I myself am so foolish as to believe in you. I don't know how you know me but it is clear that you intend to overthrow me.  
  
I, Artemis Fowl II, am smarter than that.  
  
Your illusions will have to improve. Obviously you aren't intellectuals, only the weapons you wield are dangerous. Honestly, I'm supposed to cower by the "memory" of some Holly Short?  
  
(So what happened to you?)  
  
(I made a mistake.)  
  
I don't believe it for a second.  
  
(This is goodbye, for the last time)  
  
Do you think I'm some romantic idiot, to croon over the spawn of an idea? A pretty-girl elf who was, apparently, the dearest companion of my heart? It's clichéd. Tolkien himself coined the idea, the immortal giving her love a medallion. To show her trust. But that was just a fairy tale. To amuse little children. I'm not stupid, you know.  
  
(Did I love her?) 


End file.
